Sheinei Saleem is a Kurdish JMU student who grew up in Iraq before fleeing to escape Saddam Hussein.

The young woman’s face takes on a saddened look as she tells about her childhood growing up as a Kurd in Iraq.

“I remember learning to wet a towel for protection against chemical weapons,” said Sheinei Saleem, a 22-year-old Kurdish student at JMU. “I have had a gun pointed at my face and I discovered dead bodies on my way home from school.”

Saleem and her family were some of many who fled Southern Kurdistan to escape the atrocities of Saddam Hussein during the late 1990s.

“Despite the hardships, Kurdistan is my home, and to this day, I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather be,” Saleem said. “Experiencing what I have has shaped me to be a more appreciative and stronger individual.”

Saleem serves as a regional director for the Kurdish American Youth Organization, which is one of several organizations in the United States devoted to educating people about Kurdistan.

The obstacles facing KAYO and other Kurdish-American organizations are the lack of knowledge and interest by Americans toward Kurdistan. As a result, Kurdish youth have taken it upon themselves to educate their peers. KAYO is hosting their first ever Kurdish-American Youth Conference in Nashville, Tenn., next February. Nashville is home to one of the largest populations of Kurdish youth in America.

“A voice in the U.S. that consisted of both Kurdish-Americans and Americans would be very powerful in helping get the Kurdish problem the proper attention it needs,” said KAYO president Goran Sadjadi. “It would also help promote awareness and gain further support from more people in the U.S. and across the world.”

When Sadjadi says the “Kurdish problem,” he means the issue of Kurdistan becoming an independent state in the Middle East.
Kurdistan is a geographic and cultural region in the Middle East that consists of areas in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

During the 1970s and 1980s, several attempts by various Kurdish activist groups tried to gain autonomy for the Kurds but were unsuccessful. By the 1980s, Kurds found themselves in the middle of the war between Iraq and Iran.

“I was born at the beginning of the Iraqi-Iran War,” said Ara Alan, a regional director of KAYO from Atlanta who grew up in Suilamiani in Southern (Iraqi) Kurdistan. “I lived all of my childhood in their war zone. I played my games around the sounds of bombs falling out of the sky.”

In 1988, Hussein launched the “Al-Anfal” Campaign. Kurds were alienated, thousands were executed, and thousands of their villages were destroyed. There were numerous chemical bombings and Kurds were forced from their homes.

In 1991, a “no-fly-zone” was created by the United States and United Kingdom for most of Southern Kurdistan, which gave power to Kurdish leaders in this region. In the following years, the Kurds experienced some internal disputes between the two major Kurdish political parties, but soon they turned to defending Kurdistan against Hussein.

Hussein’s brutality in the late 1990s and many families fled to the United States. Before they found ways to escape, many Kurdish families were forced to live in hiding.

“My family hid for three months,” Saleem said. “Each morning my mother stuffed bread into my and my siblings’ pockets, told us she loved us and reminded us to keep quiet if we saw any soldiers.”

Saleem’s family was relocated to the United States in 1997 after a journey from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey to Guam. During her first years in America, Saleem found it very difficult to assimilate and said she wondered what was happening back in Kurdistan and if her family members had survived.

By 2003, the United States began Operation Iraqi Freedom, and with the help of the Kurds, overthrew Hussein’s regime. Since 2005, Southern Kurds have taken part in the new Iraqi government and created a Kurdistan Alliance, but Kurdistan still yearns for total independence and recognition as an autonomous nation.

“It is difficult for me not to raise awareness, as I believe everything about me screams Kurdistan,” Saleem said. “From my Kurdish music ringtones and Kurdish translated jokes to just always taking the opportunity to let someone know where I’m from.”

http://www.thebreeze.org/2006/11-30/top1.html

Sarah Jessee is a student writer at James Madison University (JMU), (http://www.jmu.edu/). Her article was featured as a Top Story for the The Breeze, JMU's student newspaper, (http://www.thebreeze.org/).